Monday, April 23, 2012

Alberta's Progressive Conservatives have won yet another resounding
majority, brushing aside the upstart Wildrose Party with a near-sweep of
the province's major cities.

The victory means Alberta voters -- one-fifth of whom were undecided in
the final days -- opted for Alison Redford's progressive, big-government
vision for the province at a time when it's an economic leader of
Canada.

As a Lotuslander, I have no real reason to cheer for Alison Redford and her Alberta PCs. She was the lesser of two evils and, as Rick Mercer once made clear, that's the choice voters have to make.

If there is a reason to cheer it is that Wild Rose Alliance campaign director, Tom Flanagan, just got his firewall politics stuffed up his ass.

I'm probably wrong here, but something drifted through my mind earlier in the day. With a civil service, public employees and a contract public service the size of Alberta's the value of that vote could not be dismissed. And those people, those who depend on the Alberta government remaining stable were looking at two things:

- Danielle Smith promised to attack them and the security of their livelihoods; and,

- Stephen Harper, a reformer armed with a majority government, demonstrated a ruthless disregard for the people who staff the civil service. In fact, he has exhibited a pathological hatred for the civil service.

If there was ever a reliable litmus test for Danielle Smith, it is Stephen Harper.

Added:Dana's commentis germane. Overnight the professional media will be tripping over their own genitals trying to decide how they got it so wrong and blaming Alberta's voters for making them look like idiots.

Bonus!Link Byfield loses. Ezra Levant is now rooting through the fruit bowl for his next new hat.

16 comments:

I posted this below with Boris' post pre-results but really it belongs here. Feel free to delete from wherever you see fit. (Geez, what a pit of despond that might turn out to be.)

"What's the likelihood that the polling companies who got this so monumentally wrong will have an explanation by morning?

The news media, such as they are in this sad, benighted country are still trumpeting their "upset" story, as though the voters in Alberta have personally let them down and should bear some of the responsibility for making them look bad.

I firmly believe it was the social media that gave the PCs the victory. Without all our exposes of and jibes at the WRP Alberta voters may well have taken the leap to the far right instead to toward the centre. Here's hoping federal politics move toward progressiveness, too!

The PC's are relatively progressive compared to Wildrose. They've had a bad scare, and the Liberals are going to stress that the PC's owe the Liberals for all those votes that moved over in order to save us all from the barbarians. Redford occasionally shows signs of intelligence and sanity. It could be worse.

And Ted Morton lost;(I'm so glad Byfield did too), while David Swann was re-elected.

Here's hoping real change will happen. With the PC's I have my doubts. They take 44% of the vote but 71% of the seats and in the two local ridings we get a businessman and a lawyer (because god knows we always need another one of those) as MLA's with about half the vote each.

The PC's have really dropped the ball and ignored our region for a long time. An inadequate hospital, highway 63 far from twinned, a seniors home being planned and located while ignoring the voices of seniors....and a heritage fund pissed away. I think its pathetic the PC's only really do anything when they feel their power threatened. Hardly the stuff of leadership.

This election was more about voting for the government people didn't want rather than ending up with the one we need.

Steve the myth of the leftwing media is just that a myth. It was invented by the rethugs south of the border and like every other idea the Canadian right wing has, it was imported.Our right is a fully fledged foreign ideological import. It's like the comintern of old, equally as batshit crazy, equally as unfeeling and uncaring but with more Jesus and a lower level of intelligence.I cannot believe some of those folk claim to love Canada all the while desiring to turn it into the US.

I think you're on mark with the civil service comment. I've met or know a number of people working in there who most definitely aren't on the political right. Additionally, Alberta's boom brings in people from all over Canada (and the world) who might not necessarily subscribe to 'freeborn Albertan' Wildrose craziness. Am quite pleased to see that the pollsters got it wrong...that said a bit of a political shake-up in the province might be a healthy thing in the long term. Watch for some disgruntled Roser to blame the 'ethnic vote'.

Somewhere in amongst all the reading I've been doing this morning I found this stat: Alberta's population has grown by 800 thousand in the past decade alone and that number represents approximately a quarter of the population of the place.

Extrapolating from that it's not much of a stretch to assert that around half of the present voting age population of Alberta were not born there.

Which as it happens is pretty much the same as the percentage of voters who didn't bother to vote. So the pollsters got that wrong too - they were predicting a massive turnout.

But heres another point to ponder.

Let's suppose Rob Anders was right (I know, I know) when he said "I think I can safely say that the majority of members of Parliament inside the Alberta caucus, that I’m aware of, are leaning Wildrose...There are still a few stragglers who are supporting the Progressive Conservatives, but they’re more reluctant to make a public admission of that because they see the numbers and where things are heading."

Anders apparently had WR signs on his lawn and publicly supported whoever the troglodyte was in his riding.

Is there a message for Harper et al in there somewhere?

It was well known that Harper is a WR fan. Has Harper been slapped by Albertans? Especially by Calgarians?

On a lighter note I have to say that come this August driving from Vancouver to Regina and back will be less stressful without the ID and ideological purity checks at the Alberta border.

I try not to think of the current crop of pro media as being able to reproduce sexually, as it implies to me that they'll simply grow a new crop of plants who look to political press releases like flowers following the sun.

Dana, at this point, knowing it was a stark choice between the PCs and the Wildrosicrucians, people voted to keep out the tea party that decided Alberta needed to be Texas North in all legislative aspects. So, yeah, more progressive. Reality is always stranger than fiction.

I keep hearing Redford is a Red Tory. I'll believe it when it happens but she does have new MLAs so maybe there's a chance. Certainly one we weren't going to see under the 'libertarian' Wildrose. The scary thing is, if Redford could get the PCs even back to Lougheed territory, they'll beconsidered pinko commies by today's crop of Republiphiles.

Niles, if a federal election resulted in hundreds of thousands of NDP votes going Liberal to prevent a Conservative majority would that be "more progressive" too? I'm not saying that's going to happen anymore. Yet I seem to recall that since 2006 the argument against strategic voting federally was that it would only result in a Liberal government and that wouldn't be any different than a Conservative one. But now, in Alberta, it was worth it. Funny principles that slip and slide around context like that. I'm not saying you were one of those but there were lots. I know cause almost all of them yelled at me at one time or other.